Can someone show me a screenshot of how to crowbar in a lip mask into the EZSkin setup. I've used Search here and over at RNDNA and it seems to be some sort of arcane wizardry that's not clearly posted anywhere. Maybe I didn't search right, I don't know. So if someone would kindly give me a screen cap of how to do this, I'd be very thankful!

Anyone? Please, its for her, the first texture set and lighting combo that I've been happy with in a year.

For the sake of others who might come across this thread as well, I followed Bagginsbill's method for tattoos here:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2716576&page=1

If you've got a transparency and a lip map that are already correctly located -- which I did -- you don't need the "3 math channels" which help to move the image map and the transparency together to the right place. On my screenshot, that's the jumble of pink to the right that I'm not bothering to show. If you need it, you can see it in BB's examples anyway.

What I did:

The EZSkin nodes are a bit different from BB's pics. But not that different.

If you select the lips material, and locate the color map, it's connected to an hsv node and a comp node. On my setup, the wires are green.

Disconnect the image map (called "Color Map") from these two nodes and connect a blender node instead.

Then connect the Blending "plug" (I don't know the correct term, but it looks like a plug to me) of the blender node to your transparency and make the background black. Set image_mapped to None so it doesn't tile (I guess if it's the same size as the original map, that's not an issue.)

Connect Input_1 of the blender node to your main color map (probably a face map -- whatever was originally there).

Connect Input_2 to your new color map (the new lip color), and set image_mapped to None so it doesn't tile.

The Blending "plug" connected to your transparency map defaults to 0.5000, to give a 50% blend, but if you want the new color map to have a stronger effect, just make that number higher. I put it to .8 and could see a new lip color very well.

Edit: The edges of the lips don't look too great because the transparency I used was a quick hack job based on a color map, and my brushwork with a mouse is terrible. :D

Okay, from your helpful PM to me, I set it up this way. I'm going to render to see if it works.

Darn, I've only got two lip masks to play with. The first one had too much feathering.

Hmmm, looks like I'm going to have to try to paint my own mask......

Hmm. The advantage of this method is that you do get to blend the new color map with the original one somewhat, which sort of helps. But not sufficiently, if your lip transmap has hard edges, or extends beyond the material that is actually mapped to the lips.

I'm experimenting with Edge_Blend, but -- for me -- the effects are turning out to be somewhat unpredictable.

Edit: LOLOL. I'm way off the mark. Edge_Blend don't do what I think it do. :D

Not a happy accident, eh? Well I dug out my V4 face template and just painted with 8 pixel brushes white in the lip area and then a layer on top with black around the lip edge and then played with blurr because I want a very small, fine blurring around the lip line. I'm trying the map that I made now.

Sigh, even though I achieved lift off on my test render, I'm not actually sure how I would create shader presets using the lip mask. I suppose the only way to make it so that lipsticks can 'stack' on top of face maps with different makeups is to use layer transparency when I'm making the maps in the first place.......

Damn, I may have figured out how to make it work.

Quote - Damn, I may have figured out how to make it work.

Oh, yes. A very slight blur around the edges of the transmap should do the trick. Why didn't I think of that? :)

You've figured out how to make the presets? Excellent!

I think she rides! I had to go in and make my feathering of my lip mask very, very fine. But here's a test of the Metallic Grape combo. Not completely finished tho. I may add blush and I'm toying with "punk"/"cyber" facial designs. (An image search on Yahoo for cyberpunk makeup does not turn up what I would call cyberpunk, but I'm an older generation.)